Five years of fire: Romanian farmers are approaching drought

Urziceni, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 15th Aug, 2024) Dried leaves crackle underfoot as Romanian farmer Iulia Blagu walks through her scorched maize field, devastated by one of the country’s worst droughts in recent years years.

He took over 300 hectares (750 acres) near Urziceni in south-east Romania from his father half a decade ago – a baptism he describes as “five years of fire”.

“For Roman agriculture, it’s not a question of if, but when we will die,” the 39-year-old told AFP at the end of last month.

Holding an ear of corn no bigger than his hand, Blagu said the drought was eating away at his harvest “like an unstoppable steamroller,” forcing him for the first time to borrow money to pay his workers.

Romania is far from the only country affected by the scorching heat.

In neighboring Hungary, almost the entire country is on alert due to high temperatures.

At the beginning of August, dozens of Hungarian farmers led two camels through the center of Budapest to draw attention to the impact of climate change on agriculture.

Both southern and eastern Europe are facing “persistent and recurring drought conditions”, according to the latest situation report from the European Union.

The EU’s Copernicus climate change service has warned that it is “increasingly likely” that 2024 will be the hottest year on Earth.

– “To the mercy of God” –

In Romania, farmers have been promised compensation for the two million hectares of agricultural land that the government estimates have been damaged.

But one farmer told AFP that farming has become “a lottery” and that he feels “at God’s mercy”.

In hundreds of villages, wells have dried up and water restrictions have been imposed, while lakes have disappeared.

Orthodox priests also went to fields of cracked earth to pray for rain, while in another community, workers began digging up the soil to try to revive the springs.

But with a lake close to the risk of drying up, the villager Marian Florea felt bleak about the future.

“The climate has changed. And nothing good is coming,” the 53-year-old builder told AFP.

“In the fall, if this drought continues, there will be nothing here.

Meanwhile, farmers like Blagu are trying to adapt to the conditions.

It will not sow corn – once the most profitable crop in the region – any more next year.

Instead, he began testing sorghum, a more heat-resistant grain native to Africa, and is also looking to grow coriander and chickpeas in addition to his corn, sunflowers and other crops.

– “Romanian Sahara” –

Further south, near the Danube, an area of ​​100,000 hectares of sandy soil nicknamed the “Romanian Sahara” has become a testing ground for alternative crops.

The country is losing 1,000 hectares of arable land every year to climate change, according to Romanian environment minister Mircea Fechet, who fears that in 50 years the south could end up “completely desertified”.

Since 1959, a research station created to try to “make fruit from the sands” provides know-how and seeds to farmers.

With scientists warning that climate change caused by human greenhouse gas emissions is driving an increase in extreme weather, their mission has become more crucial than ever.

“Climate change forces us to invent new things, to try other species,” Aurelia Diaconu, head of the station, told AFP.

Among those grown in the station are persimmons, dates, kiwis and pistachios, species that “some time ago we didn’t even think we would taste from our fields”, he said.

But all the crops tested here are irrigated – something that few Romanian farmers currently have access to.

Of the country’s nine million hectares of arable land, less than two million hectares have irrigation – Blagu’s wheat fields among them.

“Without water we can do nothing,” she sighed.